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Soundwave on 04 September 2016
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JRPGfan said:
Soundwave said:

AMD doesn't have a mobile processor comparable to what Nvidia is doing. Nintendo's head of the technology and system architecture is also a former Nvidia employee. That and apparently Nvidia was very, very close to the 3DS contract with an older Tegra chip apparently but their chip ran too hot 5-6 years ago. 

AMD is out. Besides they themselves said they had three semi-custom design wins for gaming, we know now two of them were to Microsoft (they congratulated MS on XB1 S and XB Scorpio being new semi-custom designs) and we know the other one is PS4 Neo. So Nintnedo is out on AMD. They probably got a sweet, sweet deal on that Tegra chip because Nvidia has struggled to find vendors for it ... it's too powerful/hot for a smartphone and too powerful for a tablet too, Nvidia is only able to sell them to self-driving cars and those are really years away from selling in big volume. 

A high resolution screen is nice, but it's pointless if the chip can't render at that resolution. Running games natively at 1080P ... even the XB1 and PS4 struggle at that resolution, a mobile chip would get so hot you'd be able to cook an egg on it if you pressed it to run a high level of visuals. Also I doubt you'll be reading a lot of eBooks or browsing a ton of websites on the NX, things where screen resolution matters moreso on a small device. 

As for the multiplat thing, I don't see a ton of diversity on the PS4/XB1 ecosystem as far as what actually sells either. IMO if Nintendo goes third party then their priorities change because who gives a shit about making a Punch-Out or Wave Race or F-Zero or even a Splatoon. Your responsibilities as a third party are strictly to yourself as a company, not towards building a broad userbase. And even so, I don't even think it's a lock many of Nintendo's franchises would do great on Sony/MS' fan bases ... we can see the most popular games on those platforms are violent shooters, crime games, violent mideval hack n' slash games, and Hollywood wannabe action games, and sports or racing simulators ... none of these are genres that Nintendo does well in. 

I wouldn't mind if maybe they allowed NX software to run on Nvidia-approved PC set ups, or if the supplemental compute unit allowed you to use a Nvidia GPU straight up (a PC one) for people who really want that. Maybe they can work more with Nvidia because Nvidia seemed interested in building a software ecosystem of some type. 

AMD made their GPU for scalability in size, and they designed them so they are like Legos.

They can make ARM chips with AMD gpus if  you ask them to, custom chips.

Nvidia doesnt make their gpus like legos, it costs effeciency to do so, and they rather have really effecient chips instead.

But it means nvidia cant make custom chips without them designing the intire chip from the ground up, and it takeing years and costing a fortune.

With AMD they can litterly ask a customer what they want, write it down, go to a pc, and put int X units of said amount + Y units of said amount, and basically start production almost instantly.

They designed their technology to be like legos. They can add and remove parts, really really easily. They did this hopeing to win alot of customers that wanted their own custom designs.

 

With nvidia if you buy a chip from them, your not getting your own "special" version of a chip from them, unless your paying out the arse for it.

Which is why if nintendo went Nvidia, its very likely whatever chip they get is 100% a match for what nvidia is releaseing for other stuff.

Ei. Tegra X2 , not a version of it specialised to suit Nintendo.

 

AMD could make a mobile ARM cpu if you wanted it.

I don't think it's that simple, processors that are supposed to be in tablets/phones still require a different know how and priorities, and the only chip AMD has that would meet Nintendo's thermal needs would be the Mullins chip, which is way behind the Tegra. Nvidia has been working on Tegra for years, AMD decided to bail on mobile chips a few years ago. 

In all honesty I don't think AMD was even in Nintendo's final 2-3 choices. It was probably Nvidia vs PowerVR/Imaginiation vs. Qualcomm (Snapdragon) or DMP/Pica (3DS guys). These are the leading companies in mobile tech. 

Nintendo likely got a sweet price on the Nvidia chips because Nvidia needed a supply win for the Tegra technology badly. Self driving cars aren't going to become a mass market product for another several years at least. 

There are also other things that Nvidia does that are pretty important to a mobile chip, like their tiling approach can save Nintendo massively in memory bandwidth ... which is vitally important for a mobile chip.